


constellation correlation

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, a cliche and ridiculous ode to my first otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 15:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12843714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: While he’s falling asleep that night, he drops his phone on his chest and stares up at the ceiling, wondering if constellations could end up on people.People were made of stardust, right? What if some people had a bit more star than dust?





	constellation correlation

**.:.:.**

Karkat isn't sure how the library is still standing.

It's weathered, choked with ivy, and just as eye-wateringly ugly as it was three years ago. He's sure it hasn't seen renovations or an increase in funding for at least a decade, and it was starting to show some wear and tear.

He shoulders his bag as he reaches the doors, cursing the shitty rain as he shakes his umbrella off. Karkat fumbles to stuff it into the side pocket of his backpack, and he flinches as a blast of freezing air hits him in the face. The stairwell to the nonfiction section is to his left, and Karkat grits his teeth as he begins the long, slow climb up another set of stairs. 

No one seems to care about nonfiction besides him, leaving the second floor empty and quiet. No shuffling pages, no annoying chit-chat, and no-one smacking the keys to an ancient computer behind his head. All that, and they didn't keep the top floor at the temperature of liquid fucking nitrogen.

He paid for the silence with an arm and a leg, though. A boring walk to the library every day, and another mile-long walk back home. That, and the fact the second floor had absolutely _no_ chairs. Apparently they didn't anticipate anyone to plant their ass on the second floor for four hours a day, but whatever. There wasn't much room to complain when you were mooching off community resources.

Karkat trudges over to the very back row and dumps his backpack, biting back a curse as he knocks his elbow against a shelf. Stupid narrow walkways. Smashing an entire nonfiction section onto a single half-sized floor was really pushing the limits of interior decor.

This place really was a claustrophobic person's worst nightmare.

Plopping down between the wall bookshelf and the one in front of him, Karkat tugs his sopping hoodie off. He was going to be here awhile, and he didn’t plan on doing anything while he was dripping like a wet cat. He shakes the water from his hair and drags his bag towards him.

In all his days here, he’d never seen a living soul pass through while he was around, not even a librarian or volunteer coming to put away books. The entire place may as well be a ghost town.

He could probably get away with cold-blooded murder in here and no one would come to investigate the screams.

Karkat stops rummaging through his bag. That was a darksided thought.

He finds his notebook after some muttering and tosses it on top of the textbook. Grabbing a pen from the dark depths of his backpack, he turns his attention to the black text and unfeeling diagrams.

Diseases transmitted though bodily fluids, awesome.

With another deep, forlorn sigh, Karkat sets his pen to paper and titles his notes. This was exactly how he wanted to spent his Saturday afternoon, obviously.

He's gotten halfway through the chapter by the time he hears footsteps on the stairs, and judging by the pain in his back, he guesses that he's been here for about forty-five minutes. He freezes up, pen stalling on the curve of a 'g'. He sends a quick prayer up to God for this person's business to be near the front of the room.

Either he had enormously shitty luck, or he didn't have a lot of contacts with the big guy.

The person turns the corner to his aisle, and Karkat fleetingly wonders how disheveled he looks on a scale of one to ten.

(Seven, at least.)

They obliviously approach him, not even slowing down, and Karkat rushes to fold his legs up so they can walk past. It's too late, and they try and blindly fail to step over him. They go down in a flash of red hoodie, tripping over his half-outstretched leg, and Karkat jumps up.

His ears are hot-- shit, his whole face is hot. He struggles for words beyond a rush of confusion, irritation, and embarrassment. "Jesus-- are you blind or something? I was right there!" He says in a rush, half-whispering and half-shouting. Apparently the conditioning to be quiet in libraries was deeper than he thought.

“Yeah, actually.” The person, a girl with red hair, lifts her head, and Karkat gaze stops on the hazy grey of her eyes. Shit. He glances quickly at the shelf marked 'Braille' to the left of her. Extra shit.

The slope of her nose and the freckles on her face are agonizingly familiar, and he clams up for a minute. There was no way in hell. His eyes stop on the print of her hoodie, a gaudy dragon design, and his heart does an Olympic series of flips in his chest. He counts off the constants in his head: red hair, dragons, freckles,.. blind as a bat.

He should approach this carefully, just in case it's not her. Save his pride, or whatever was left of it.

"Are you going to apologize, or should I fall back down and scream for help? Tripping a blind girl isn't something you can bounce back from, y'know."

Oh, it was definitely--

"Terezi?"

**.:.:.**

"Terezi?"

The girl freezes, face twisting up in confusion, and Karkat clenches his teeth. Oh, he blew it. This random girl was not his best friend from grade school, and he just tripped her and mistook her for someone else. Nice save there Vantas, you irredeemable dolt.

She leans forward a marginal amount. "Karkat?" She draws out the syllables of his name out hesitantly, and Karkat feels his stomach bottom out.

"I- um. Yeah. That's me." He rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck, wondering if he should put out his hand or hug her or something. There wasn't really a code of conduct for reunions like this. What  _are_ you supposed to do when faced with your best friend for the first time in three years?

Trip her, apparently.

Her face brightens, and she drops her bag to wrangle him into a hug. She squeezes him tight and Karkat responds numbly, patting her back in an awkward manner as she pulls away. "You figured out who I was pretty fast," he notes suspiciously, and Terezi grins at him.

"Your voice dropped like, an octave, but I knew it was you the moment you opened your mouth to gripe at me."

Karkat feels a familiar irritation bristle in the back of his mind. "I wasn't griping," he defends weakly, and Terezi blows a raspberry at him before reaching down to grab her bag.

"The lady at the front desk said they still have all the braille books I made them order, so help me look." She meanders back towards the Braille section, and Karkat gives his study pile a look. Obviously she wasn't hesitating in picking up their friendship again, so he shouldn't either.

He nudges his textbook shut with the toe of his shoe before moving to follow. Some things never changed.

She walks out with a too-large stack of books, ranging from actual nonfiction to bullshit nursery rhymes, and she dumps them in his arms as she starts for the exit. He trots to catch up, falling in step beside her. "Forget how to read braille or something?" he says, feigning irritation, and she waves a hand.

"Just felt like reliving the nostalgia."

"When did you get back, exactly?" Karkat asks, changing the topic. He moves to juggle a book back into the bundle between his arms, and Terezi makes a thoughtful noise.

"About five days ago." The tap-tap-tapping of her cane loses its beat as she thinks, and after a moment she speaks up again. "I figured you'd moved away too. Either that, or I'd just run into you when I went back to school."

He hums, turning his head to give the street a thoughtful look as they walked. "Dad ended up buying a house here, so I doubt we'll be leaving anytime soon."

"Oooh." Terezi bumps her shoulder against his, agonizingly familiar. "Gotten bored of the town yet?"

Truthfully, he wasn't sure he'd been anything but bored since she left. He'd finished middle school and dragged himself through the first two years of high school, but now he couldn't conjure up anything interesting he'd done since she left.

That was sort of pathetic.

He readjusts the books in his arms again, wondering if being a pack-mule was payment for Terezi's particular spice of life. "Well, there's a lot to get bored of." he comments. "Any reason you decided to drop in halfway through the first semester?"

"The element of surprise, obviously." she says smartly. "No-one expects a new student in October."

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Bullshit. No-one's going to expect you at all. Did your aunt get a new job?"

Terezi quirks her lips to the side, looking pensive. "Sort of. She half-retired."

"She finally cashes in and she comes back here?"

"I said half-retired," Terezi interrupts. "She's full retiring to Costa Rica."

Karkat snorts dismissively and presses the crosswalk button. "I hope I can half-retire at age fifty. Why here and not California or something?"

"I burn easy," she offers half-heartedly, and she must feel his blank look because she shrugs, shaking her head. "Something about familiarity."

The crosswalk turns green, and he nudges her back into a walk across the street. "Familiarity. Huh."

**.:.:.**

"You honestly thought all of this was worth keeping?" Karkat picks up a dragon plush, almost dropping it when it squeaks in his hand. Terezi leans over to snatch it back, tossing it in the general direction of her bed. It bounces against the hardwood with a pitiful wheeze and rolls over to her dresser.

"We're supposed to be looking for something, I swear it was in one of these boxes."

She tips one of the shorter boxes over, swiping out more stuffed animals as she went. Karkat sighs. "Jesus, how many of these do you have?"

She pauses to give him an uncannily accurate look in his direction. "Not enough, now help me find a crab."

Karkat pauses his search through the pile of stuffed animals, hand freezing on the nineteenth dragon he's seen that day. "You mean that dumb beanie baby I gave you when we were ten?"

"No, the other dumb beanie baby you gave me when you were ten," she replies, deadpan, and Karkat leans back in dismay.

"You're shitting me, you kept that?"

She bristles. "Of course I kept it, it was cute." She sits back, folding her arms, and he figures she would look more serious if she didn't have six tiny, sand-bellied lizards in her lap. "I don't throw away gifts."

Blowing his bangs out of his face, he leans to snag the corner of a box. "Point taken. Let's find Crabby."

"His name is Sir Pinchy," Terezi corrects seriously, and Karkat snorts as she laughs at her own joke.

It felt good to be back.

**.:.:.**

Exams rolled in too damn fast.

They'd slipped in under Karkat's radar, between bouts of absentmindedness and his daydreamy glances towards corners, desk legs, and the back of his classmates' heads. Terezi had slipped under their radar too, blending seamlessly into their group before they could notice the change.

One minute he's arguing with Sollux over a group project, and the next, Terezi is chipping in with fun facts about _Seattle,_ of all things.

She stabs boredly at a side salad before setting her fork down, and Karkat glances up from his textbook as she starts to talk.

"You know, it doesn't rain that much in Seattle."

Sollux lets out a low groan as he drops his binder against the table, and the dull 'smack' makes Terezi break into a sharp smile. "5.3 hours of rain on average."

"Out of what? Weeks? Months?" Karkat replies, and Sollux plants his face in the pages of his Chemistry notes.

Terezi shrugs and forks up another bite of lettuce. "Dunno, I got that fact from Google."

"Get back to us when you have concrete information." Sollux snarks, lifting his head, and Terezi raises her brows at him from across the table before reaching for her phone. Sollux freezes. "No wait, don't-"

She lights up her screen and puts the mic close to her face. "Siri, How much rainfall does Seattle get yearly?"

"I don't know," the phone replies, "let me Google that for you."

Sollux puts his head in his hands as the page loads, and after a moment he speaks up. "So, get it over with. How much does it rain in Seattle?"

Terezi clicks her tongue as she stares blankly at the screen. "Not sure, I don't have screenreader on."

"Jesus fucking-- give it to me." Karkat reaches over to grab her phone, swiping down a list of suggestions. "53 inches per year, compared to the national average of 42. Guess we can put that stupid joke to rest."

He hands the phone back, and Terezi grabs it. "Told you. It doesn't even rain that much."

Kanaya appears to the left of the table, and she sets down her (probably hand-embroidered) messenger bag as she settles into the seat besides Terezi. "What are we talking about, exactly?"

"Kanaya, did you know it actually doesn't rain that much in Seattle?" Terezi asks, and Sollux gives a weak wheeze as Kanaya shakes her head.

**.:.:.**

"Well at least it's almost over!" Terezi says brightly as she drizzles syrup over her pancakes, and Karkat watches her overdose her plate with a dead look. The waitress had given him a concerned glance as she'd refilled his coffee cup for the third time, and Karkat had long given up on making the black-tar coffee tolerable. Better to just choke it down.

After a moment he reaches over the table to stop her syrup rampage. "You're drowning them, Pyrope."

"I need the sugar," she defends as she sets the container back, and Karkat blows his bangs out of his face. He was in a Denny's at 6am on a Friday, watching his best friend saturate a pancake with syrup, and he had a Chem exam in an hour. And it was still fucking dark outside.

He breathes a sigh as he takes another forlorn sip of his coffee. So much for breaking his caffeine habit. Maybe that would be his new year's resolution... for the second year in a row.

Terezi pauses her overenthusiastic pancake-decimation to gesture at his coffee. "Give me a sip of that."

He drags the mug closer protectively. "Why? You hate coffee."

"Change of heart. Gimme." He slides it over, and she makes a face as she takes a sip. "Good Christ, that tastes like it was scraped off the inside of a coffee filter."

Karkat rolls his eyes as he drags the mug back towards himself. "We all make sacrifices for exam season, Pyrope. For example, you're murdering your arteries with a lethal dose of Mrs. Butterworth."

She takes another thoughtful bite. "Sugar is a food group on its own."

"Alright, Buddy the elf."

"That was low," she says seriously, pointing her sticky fork in his face, and he pushes her hand away by the wrist.

"Unlike your blood sugar."

**.:.:.**

He wakes up to banging at his door, and he rolls out of bed to slouch down the stairs. The house was empty; Kankri and his father went to a church service, and he was happy to sleep in. The stove clock reads 11:21 in red LEDs, and Karkat yanks the door open to see wrapping paper.

"Merry after-Christmas!" Terezi sings behind the wrapped box, and Karkat moves aside to let her in.

He shuffles to close the door and follow her into the living room, wondering how she knew the layout of his house better than her own. "Happy not-holidays, Pyrope." he replies in turn, and she gives him a grin.

Shoving the gift at him, she plops onto the couch. "It's the 26th, which means late presents."

"It's also winter break, which means you shouldn't wake me up before noon." He says back, and she makes a feeble kick for his shin. It lands, miraculously, and Karkat stumbles away from the blow.

"Not the thing to say to the girl who got you a Christmas gift."

"Christmas Day Observed gift," he corrects, and she sticks her tongue out at him. He leans to set the present on the couch cushion next to her, running his hand through his hair. "Your gift is upstairs, let me get it."

The trudge up the stairs feels longer when he's half-asleep and riddled with anxiety, and by the time he makes it back down, he's tempted to throw the gift out the window and let some passing vacuum salesman run over it.

He hands it to her anyway, rubbing at the back of his neck as he passes it over. She fumbles with it for a moment before tearing the wrapping, and she runs her fingers over the cover before stopping on the braille. "Oh my god."

"Yeah," he says dumbly, and her face lights up as she cracks the cover.

"You got me Dragonology in braille?" She gives a short half-laugh as she glances down at the pages, and Karkat feels his face flush. He's almost thankful she can't see, just so she couldn't see him turning red over a Christmas gift. That, and his gift wouldn't make sense otherwise.

"Yeah," he says again, and it sounds dumber the second time.

She sets the closed book off to the side to hug him, and Karkat fidgets in the embrace before hugging her back. She pulls away to grin in the direction of the book, and she picks it back up with a careful reverence. "How much did this cost you? It had to be specially ordered."

"Not a lot," he lies. "Just a fuck ton of copyright paperwork from the publisher. Once I pulled the 'I want to make this book accessible to the disabled' card, they caved pretty fast."

She laughs earnestly, the sound different from her broken-glass cackle. She passes her hands over it one more time, fingers running over the raised logo, and turns sideways. "Oh yeah, your gift." Finding a package among the couch cushions, she passes it over, looking hesitant.

He takes it before she can falter too much, picking at a corner of the wrapping. "It's either a dollar bin romance novel or a tennis bracelet," he says, and she snorts. He finishes unwrapping it to find Adam Sandler's face. A signature is at the bottom, a familiar print on the corner of the movie poster, and Karkat masks his laugh as a cough.

"This is-" he searches for a word, "- absolutely awe-inspiring. The fact that you managed to wander through the labyrinth of eBay with a screenreader and find this makes you a force of nature, Pyrope."

"Only twenty eight bucks plus shipping." She says smartly, clapping a hand against his back for emphasis. "Hate to break it to you, but I was the only bidder."

He stretches the poster out to look at it, and the high-definition pores on Adam's face practically scream 'Christmas miracle' through the paper. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

"Merry Christmas," Terezi says with a flourish, and he gives her a smile, almost forgetting she couldn't see it.

"Merry Christmas Day Observed to you too."

**.:.:.**

The new semester kicks him in the metaphorical balls. Winter doesn't do him any damn favors either, between the blood-freezing cold and the icy stair that breaks his wrist. He's sure he could sue Terezi's aunt for that one-- it did happen on her property-- but he only knew one lawyer and he doubted she'd be willing to sue herself.

Terezi signs his cast and pokes fun at him for the rest of February, and his handwriting is terrible for two months.

It's not until March that things veer off the tracks.

He's in Calculus when his train of thought crashes and sets fire to everything in sight, destroying the set of Little House on the Prairie and costing him thousands in lawsuits from Laura Ingles Wilder.

She's a few seats away, never farther than his peripherals, and the teacher starts a lengthy powerpoint lecture that she forgets Terezi can't see. Karkat doesn't see it either, too busy watching her prop her chin in her hand to listen.

She closes her eyes when she focuses, brows furrowing as she thinks. Her eyes flutter open when she wants to jot something down, and her pencil scrawls a lopsided font down the side of her page as she rushes to take notes.

Karkat zones out. When the teacher slaps the table in front of him, he almost shouts in surprise, whacking his knee into the underside of his desk. The class bursts into giggles, and he feels his ears flush under his hair.

He can't remember why he was staring in her direction in the first place.

**.:.:.**

"Capybaras are rodents?" Terezi says with a hint of disbelief, and Sollux nods seriously.

"Largest rodents in the world. They're semi-aquatic, apparently."

Karkat tunes out there, refocusing on the Calculus homework in front of him. As interesting as large rodents sounded, he was pulling a low B in Calc and he wanted an A by midterms. His zone-out during that particular lesson hadn't helped his case either, so he was doing this problem set with nothing but a textbook and some lopsided notes from Terezi.

Oddly enough, her notes were more helpful than the textbook, when they were legible.

He scribbles down a formula under one problem, and he's finished three by the time the bell rings. Terezi snags the strap of her bag off the table as Sollux traipses off to whatever fifth period he has, and Karkat gets up to stuff his things into his backpack.

When he looks up, she's waiting for him, tapping her index finger impatiently against her thigh. Her hair is haloed by the sun, making the red look twice as intense, and he pauses to look at her. After a moment that feels too long, she snaps her fingers at him.

"I forgot my cane, hurry up. I don't want to run into a door today."

All poetic thoughts of her are gone in an instant, and he hauls his bag onto his shoulder. "Yeah, yeah. I'm coming."

**.:.:.**

She wears a sleeveless shirt one day. It's something Kanaya made, just acceptable enough for the dress code and decorated in a plain pattern Kanaya probably has a ton of. He feels weird, seeing her in anything but that gaudy hoodie or the variety of novelty t-shirts she's picked up at the thrift store.

The shirt even matches her shoes; he knows Kanaya is behind this outfit.

"Rose looked over your paper, and she said you could be more descriptive," Kanaya offers gently, and he kicks a pebble out in front of him.

"Maybe, if I was I was aiming to be the next Hemingway," he replies sarcastically, and Kanaya gives him a look.

He sighs. "I'll look it over again, she's probably right." He'd written the draft the night before, desperate to finish and go the hell to bed. That, and Rose probably shadowed as an editor for the _New York Times._ If anybody was gonna give him qualified essay advice, it was Lalonde. 

They lapse into a comfortable silence, and Sollux and Terezi are chattering about something ahead of them. Karkat tugs on the strap of his bag, dragging it up farther up onto his shoulder. He doesn't bother tuning into their conversation. They were either having arguing, or discussing something ridiculous.

She has a lot of freckles this year. It probably has something to do with coming back to a town with actual sunlight, but they're all over her shoulders in a smattering of tan-brown. He finds himself tracing them with his eyes, connecting the dots until he reaches the lock of hair between her shoulderblades.

She has either side thrown over her shoulder, so that one lock is irritatingly out of place. He wants to brush it back.

To the left or the right, he doesn't really care. He seriously thinks about it for a moment, just reaching forward and brushing it back over her shoulder. (He could cover it up by walking ahead of her, blame the graze of his knuckles over her shoulder on the fact he was trying to avoid knocking her head with his elbow. He was taller than her now, it happens.)

Kanaya bumps her hand against his, tearing him out of his study of her shoulders, and he suddenly feels superbly creepy. Christ, Vantas. You were the reason they banned sleeveless shirts, you mongrel. She gives him a look, and Karkat nods absentmindedly, brushing away that train of thought.

While he’s falling asleep that night, he drops his phone on his chest and stares up at the ceiling, wondering if constellations could end up on people.

People were made of stardust, right? What if some people had a bit more star than dust?

It's poetic and stupid and absolutely ridiculous, and he glares at a spiderweb in the corner of his room before rolling over, too angry at himself to fall asleep.

**.:.:.**

He and Terezi share three class periods, and those three subjects become the most problematic areas in his entire goddamn education. One of them was Economics, and he had no idea he could bomb an Econ quiz until he spends an entire forty five minutes staring at the side of her face. (The pop quiz was biased as hell, there was no way they'd actually done profit margins yet.)

He wasn't stuttering or tripping over himself in her presence, so as far as he was concerned, he was safe. When that happened, he could always ask Kanaya mercy-kill him.

It's not a big deal. His childhood crush was flaring up again like some kind of chronic illness, and he was going to whack-a-mole that infatuation back into the tunnels of his subconscious. Let it plague his therapy sessions thirty years from now, fine. He just wanted to pass English with a grade letter higher than a fucking C.

(She’s always there, just never tangible in his head. She's the backdrop every time he closes his eyes, but if he focuses on her too hard, he sees right through her.)

It's really nothing. The traitorous thoughts aren't even worth dissecting, and they definitely weren't worth agonizing over. They were stupid echoes of an infatuation, a middle school crush that's been lying dormant in his stupid head since he was twelve.

(She's just lint and he's glue; everything she said sticks to him and he just can't stop thinking about it.)

It wasn't even a problem. They were going to finish school, she was going to take her 4.13 GPA all the way to Harvard and adopt a seeing eye dog, and he was going to get a job as a desk jockey for a failing paper company somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was going to become an episode of the Office, and she was going to be... Law and Order. Yeah. Way different worlds.

(He's gotta stop thinking about it.)

**.:.:.**

"How many deaths were the direct result of World War II?"

Karkat falters, and he tosses the tennis ball from one hand to the other as he thinks. "Estimated 50 to 85 million."

Terezi flips a page, and he can see her hands moving in his peripherals. He throws the tennis ball against the wall, catching it as it bounces back, and she speaks up again. "When did Japan officially surrender?"

"Exact date or year?" The ball bounces back a second time.

"Exact date."

He catches it for the third time and holds it for a moment. "August 9th. 1945."

She shakes her head, and runs her hands over another line of braille. "Nope. That was the date Nagasaki was bombed. They surrendered on the 15th."

Karkat frowns at the wall and bounces it a little higher, reaching above his head to snag it on the rebound. "Damn." He shifts his head on the pillow, leaning to look at her. She's sideways, sitting crosslegged on the carpet, and he rolls over to throw the ball again. "There's too many dates."

She reaches over to pin his wrist before he can, ejecting the book from her lap as she leans over him. "How long was the Cold War?"

"46 years." He answers smartly, and pulls his hand free from her grip to sit up from the floor. "How long are you going to drill me, Pyrope?"

She huffs and sits back. "Until I'm sure you're going to ace this."

"Right," he says slowly. "Because my AP World History grade is really what you're here for."

She makes a scandalized noise, aiming a feeble kick at his knee, and he moves to get out of range. "Unbelievable, I walk miles--"

"You live two streets down from me!"

"Miles," she insists, "to help you with AP World History, and you offer me peanuts in return. Peanuts!"

Karkat scoffs, the sound coming out more as a laugh than anything else. "Just admit you're freaking out over finals."

She pauses for a split second, hands freezing on the cover of her history textbook, and after a quick moment she turns her nose up at him, feigning disgust. "To imply something like that is tactless and brash. I just got tired of asking myself questions, that's all."

"Uh huh," Karkat says with suspended disbelief. Moving back to lay down on the floor, he tosses the tennis ball at the wall. "If you're gonna keep quizzing me, just avoid dates."

"No promises," she mumbles.

**.:.:.**

"They posted the final grades for AP Gov," Sollux says boredly, staring at his phone, and Karkat reaches over to snatch it from him.

"No way they did, it's barely been a week--" He glances at the screen, filtering past the student codes and all the coordinating percentages, and he curses the student privacy act as he scrolls a mile down to his own number.

Low A. That was perfectly acceptable, thank god.

Terezi leans over and bumps her shoulder with his. "Tell me mine. It's 2003--"

"I know your code, Pyrope. I've done this for you a million times," Karkat grumbles, swiping down the list, and she makes a defensive noise.

"It's illegal to know someone else's privacy code. Breach of privacy!"

"Where the hell did you get that factoid? The student handbook?" Sollux snipes back, and Karkat leans away from the table, letting them argue it out over his lap. Why did he always sit in the middle? He finds her number among the other 2003's, and he follows the line to her grade, ignoring their nonsensical argument.

He stops.

He scrolls up and down both ways, scanning over all the numbers from 56 to 98, before stopping on her grade again. 100%. She was, probably, the only damn person who managed to ace the test with a perfect score. God, the bell curve had to fucking hate her.

"So?" Terezi asks, drawing out the word. The temporary truce has Sollux leaning over too, and Karkat blows his bangs out of his eyes.

"You aced it. Not even standardized testing can best you, apparently."

Her face brightens with a million-watt smile, and she jumps up from the table. "Wait really? Tricking a blind girl isn't in good taste."

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Yes, really. A whopping one hundred percent. You murdered the curve."

"Ha!" Terezi whoops, and behind him, Sollux groans something about a lost bet. The moment gets lost in translation as he feels Terezi's hands on his face, and Karkat barely has time to yank himself away before she's pressing a lopsided kiss to his face. It's sloppy and halfway off his mouth, but she lays it on him anyway, pulling away with a shout. "One hundred percent! Ha! Where's my winnings?"

Sollux stutters behind him, obviously just as shell-shocked as he is. "I -- uh. Yeah. Here." He pulls a crumpled twenty from his pocket and passes it over, and Terezi grabs it enthusiastically.

He feels faint. He's sure if he overheats any more he'll auto-combust and die, but only if his heart doesn't shudder to a stop first. He wonders if he should seek medical attention.

Terezi wheels back around, and Karkat braces himself for impact. She was going to yell 'SIKE' or something, reveal that this was just a huge joke, but instead she points at him. "You owe me too. I demand a celebratory lunch at a pizza buffet."

Karkat stares at her for a moment, brain working at the speed of a luxury cruise ship, and Sollux claps him on the back. "You two have fun with that, I'm going to call AA."

The blow knocks some sense into him, and Karkat numbly passes him his phone. "Uh, yeah. See you later." He stands up and tugs at his shirt collar, suddenly feeling too hot in the cotton tee, and Terezi starts saying something about an all-you-can eat pizzeria downtown.

Halfway to his car, he presses his fingers to his lips and wonders if she even noticed it.

**.:.:.**

She did notice it, because she lingers in his car after the victory lunch. It had been just comfortable to pass for normal, but too quiet to pass for something celebratory. He feels guilty; he was the one who kept letting the stunted silences stretch for too long, and he was the one who felt so anxious he couldn't eat.

Terezi wrings her hands uncharacteristically, mulling over her words for a moment, and her thoughts come out in a rush. "Sorry. That was stupid. I didn't mean to."

Karkat freezes. "No, it's-- fine," he blurts out quickly, and flinches at himself. "Honestly."

"I wasn't trying to make things weird, I was just -" she searches for a word, "- excited."

He fumbles with his wallet for a minute, checking each pocket like it had the answer to all his stupid problems. He finds a quarter and two fives, and he resists the urge to smack himself as he keeps talking. "No. Yeah. I get it. We're friends."

"Yeah," Terezi says, sounding relieved. "Friends."

He leaves his car idling in her driveway for an long moment after she goes inside, and for some reason 'friends' is the worst word in the dictionary.

**.:.:.**

She corners him two weeks later, and by sheer coincidence, it's the same moment he corners her.

"We need to talk."

"I want to talk to you."

They freeze in front of each other, both daring each other to go first, and Karkat caves. In the middle of her kitchen was not where he anticipated on doing this, but he'd procrastinated returning her hoodie for three days, and he's sure it's considered thievery by the fifth. "Things have been--"

"Weird," she finishes for him, and he fumbles for a moment.

The classy, spacious area of her house feels suffocating, and he wonders if all Victorian models felt this claustrophobic. After a moment he sighs. "Yeah."

Terezi swallows, quirking her lips to the side. "I really don't want to spend the summer like this."

"Neither do I," he agrees quickly, and the silence hangs between them. He rubs the back of his neck and studies the ancient tile of her kitchen backsplash, searching for words. "Can we just? Forget about it?"

She nearly slumps with relief. "Yeah. Sounds good."

"Good," he blurts out, feeling lighter already, and he takes a breath. "See you later?"

"See you later," she confirms, and she catches him in a hug on his way out the door. He lingers in it for an almost not-platonic moment, and the walk home feels more like a victory lap than anything else.

**.:.:.**

"You can't abandon me to the wolves," Terezi says, and Karkat cradles his flip-phone between his shoulder and his cheek as he twists the frying pan.

"It's the ocean, Terezi, not a pack of wild animals." Her childish groan crackles through his receiver, and he flips over his grilled cheese before transferring the phone to his free hand. "Why do you need me to come, anyway?"

He can think of a few reasons on his own, but he wanted to see what else she could come up with. That, and he's sure they both knew he was going to cave, and he wanted to make her work for it. Just a little bit. "Well," she starts off, sounding excited at proving him wrong. "For one, Latula is in London, and we both know my aunt isn't going to hold my hand."

"So I have to?" he replies boredly, and she makes an offended noise.

"Stop acting like it's a chore! You get a week at a nice hotel, and I get to... not drown."

He transfers his sandwich to a plate, and dumps the pan in the sink. "And you're layering all your hopes and dreams on me, why?"

"Come with me, or I'll put a dead fish in your car." He doesn't doubt the threat, but she certainly lacked intent.

He _'tut'_ s thoughtfully. "I'll check my schedule."

"You have no schedule. See you on Friday," she scoffs, and the _'click'_   before the dial-tone is final. Staring at his food, he flips his phone shut and stuffs it in his pocket, grabbing the plate.

Apparently, he had plans for July now.

**.:.:.**

For someone renowned enough to earn the name 'Redglare' in court, Terezi's aunt trusted him a bit too much. Maybe it had something to do with knowing his father; he had no idea. How a priest and a lawyer got along so well, he had even less of a clue.

Either way, he was currently staring one of the nations best attorneys in the face, and she was handing him the check-in information to her hotel room. Not even a hint of doubt towards his intentions. None. He wonders if this is a test, and she was going to organize his murder in a back alley if he failed it.

"A case came up, and it's going to be televised, so I'm obligated to be present," she explains, and Karkat's convictions towards reality disappear with a _'poof.'_   He was definitely in a bad rom-com, or some equally cheesy romance novel. "I trust you and Terezi not to cause trouble. I do know your father, after all."

She levels him with a look, and Karkat nods dumbly. "Yeah. Best behavior," he says, feeling stupider with every word, and Terezi muffles a snicker behind him.

He tucks the hotel pamphlet in his back pocket before turning back around, and Terezi follows him to his car, looking a little too pleased with herself. "You're behind this somehow," he accuses, and she looks taken aback.

"Actually, no. I'm just as shocked and bewildered as you are, Kat." He makes a face at the nickname and opens the door for her, wondering how in the world this ended up happening. Terezi shrugs as she grabs her seatbelt. "I guess being my childhood friend has benefits."

He snorts out a disbelieving laugh as he climbs into the driver's seat, and he leans against the steering wheel for a long minute. "I don't know how this could get more cliché."

"I could have made a mixtape," Terezi offers, and Karkat wishes she could see his glare.

**.:.:.**

"She mistook us for a couple," he says disbelievingly, staring at the single queen size bed in the center of the room, and Terezi bursts into a bout of laughter.

"Oh god," she gets out between wheezes, "this is so funny. We should have brought a camcorder or something, we could make hundreds on this script."

Karkat sighs and runs a hand through his bangs, wishing he got a haircut before this trip. "If this is a rom-com, we need to kill the director."

"Oh come on, we can be adults about this." Terezi says, throwing her cane down as she moves to sit on the bed. She bounces on it a few times for good measure, and pats the spot next to her. "Either that, or we can take turns on the armchair." she offers, and Karkat shakes his head.

"I'm calling the front desk." he states, and Terezi makes an impressive grab for his arm.

"Nonono. We do not need to make a big deal out of this." She drags him into a sit beside her. "This bed is big enough for us to sleep on the edges. We can even roleplay as an couple in marriage counselling."

Karkat levels her with a look. "You're making this worse."

She snorts, dissolving back into laughter, and Karkat slumps back onto the bed. She pats his chest awkwardly, half-missing and landing a hand on his ribs. "We fell asleep on each other like what, fifty times when we were kids? This is nothing."

She has a point, and he frowns up at the ceiling. On the flip-side, he didn't have a disgustingly huge crush on her age fucking seven. He had to nip this in the bud once and for all. Get it over with so he could put this stupid crush to rest. Maybe she drooled in her sleep or something; she could at least try to make this easy and kick him a few times.

After a minute he sits up. "Fine. But if I find rose petals on the pillows when we come back tomorrow, I'm dragging us both back home."

**.:.:.**

Of course the hotel had a private beach. What else would the Pyrope family spend their damn money on? A hotel _without_ a private beach?

There's not a lot of people present aside from the meager amount of hotel guests, and Terezi hesitates by the steps, looking pensive. "How big is it?"

He rolls his eyes. "Fucking enormous. I know you've seen the ocean before." Before she went blind, he doesn't say, but she blows a raspberry at him anyway.

"Fat load of help you are," she says haughtily, and Karkat helps lead her down the rest of the stairs.

"You haven't drowned yet, so I think I'm doing just fine," he replies evenly, and Terezi stops to bury her toes in the sand.

It apparently doesn't disappoint her, because she's heading off to the next thing in a moment's notice, plowing through the thick sand to get to the water. Karkat dumps their stuff and moves to follow, watching her stop in front of the shoreline.

She has a weird look on her face, and he brushes shoulders with her. "You're nowhere near the water yet, Pyrope," he comments, and she bristles.

"I know that. I'm just..." she pauses, "getting mentally prepared." He raises a brow at her, tempted to say something witty. He decides not to, and after a moment of silence she grabs his hand, dragging him along with a renewed purpose. "Alright, let's go."

She gets about thigh-deep in the water before she stops, wavering as the undercurrent drags the sand out from under her feet. Karkat watches her face, and she sighs. "This is..."

"Less exciting than you expected?" he tries, and she shakes her head.

"A lot more nerve wracking when you can't see anything. What if I step on a crab or something?" she finishes, and Karkat blows out a sigh through his nose.

"You're not gonna step on a crab, not unless you manage to trip over me."

She gives him a wry look. "Very funny." She makes a grab for his other hand, and he helpfully offers it for her. "Let's go out farther. I want to put my head under."

He moves out in front of her, walking backwards as he tugs her along. "You trust me that much, Pyrope?"

"You could say that."

**.:.:.**

They fall asleep with a lot of unsaid words piling between their backs, and wake up the same way.

(Neither of them talk about it, and they spend the first half of the day splitting dishes at a buffet. He's pretty sure the waitress gave them a couple's discount, but he stuffs the receipt in his pocket and doesn't mention it.)

The second night they fall asleep in the same positions, only Karkat wakes up in the middle of the night with her forehead pressed to his back. She must have woken up and realized it too, because when their wake-up call comes at 8am, she's moved to the farthest edge of the bed.

(She actually manages to dunk her head under the water that day. She nearly breaks one of his fingers when a wave crashes over their head, but the fact that she doesn't let go of his hand seems more important.)

He wakes up halfway through the third night with his arm slung over her waist, and it takes five minutes to get his arm back without waking her up.

(She gets a sunburn on her nose, and spends the rest of the afternoon pressing on it gingerly with her fingers. He buys an overpriced bottle of aloe lotion from the hotel store, and he has to thumb away the spots where she put too much on.)

They wake up facing each other, her head in his chest and his arm around her waist, and spend a solid minute untangling their limbs. They apologize at the same time in embarrassed rushes, and sit on opposites sides of the bed for a long, quiet moment before they both burst into awkward laughter. Karkat thinks they're getting better at this 'friends' thing.

(The skies are grey, so they skip the beach for the sake of convenience. He buys a disposable camera and take a horrible collection of touristy photos for shits and giggles instead. It feels strange, thinking about what the pictures would mean a year from now.)

The fifth night, everything spirals completely and utterly out of control.

**.:.:.**

"Is it still raining?" he asks as he steps out of the bathroom, and Terezi nods.

He ruffles his hair with a towel one last time before draping it over the back of a chair, watching through the window as lighting streaks across the sky. It lights up the ocean below them, and Karkat glances thoughtfully at the flickery streetlight by the sea-road. "Guess it's not gonna let up, after all."

"Nope," Terezi says absentmindedly, fingers moving quickly over the words of her book, and Karkat slumps into the desk chair. He watches her fingers move for a moment before pulling out his phone, glancing at the time.

12:11.  Jeez, they got back really late this time.

The Law & Order: SVU episode on the screen behind him bongs as the title screen appears, and Karkat gives her a look. "There's no way you can read and pay attention to the episode at the same time."

She hums, distracted, before looking up. "What?"

"You've got a lot going on here." He gestures between the television and the book in her lap, before remembering she couldn't see his hand motions. "I can't even listen to music and read at the same time."

A vicious crack of thunder startles her before she can reply, and she returns to her book as the aftershocks rumble through the sky. "I'm just... multitasking."

She was afraid of thunder. Jesus, how could he forget? Karkat stops, fingers pausing on the buttons of his phone, and he snaps it shut. "I think I'm gonna go to bed."

Terezi looks up and wordlessly scoots over to make room, setting her book on the nightstand. She looks a little regretful as she shuts off the TV, and Karkat falters as he sits down on the bed next to her. He takes a breath, wondering if he even had the mental capacity to handle this, and Terezi raises a brow at him when he huffs out a sigh. "You're still afraid of thunder, aren't you."

It's phrased as a statement, not a question, and she flushes. "Not really-- we're just really close to the ocean and its--" She pauses, fumbling for words, and he wonders if he's ever seen Terezi so tied up in knots.

"C'mere." He reaches to tug on her hand, and she hesitates before laying down next to him. She laces their fingers together as she moves closer, and Karkat wonders if this was anywhere in the realm of platonic. Probably not. He wonders why the hell he isn't freaking out.

Her breath is warm on his collarbone, and he feels a flush crawl up his throat as the exhale of her words brushes past his skin. "I didn't think you'd notice."

"Well, between your multitasking and how you flinched at every thunderclap, it was hard to overlook," he replies, and she huffs a laugh against his chest.

"This is a funny way of comforting me, Kat."

He scoffs in the back of his throat. "You can accept my awkward attempts at reassurance or turn the television back on. Your call."

She hums contentedly. "The former."

"Good choice."


End file.
